We are changing our gym name!

Coach Mehdi here and I am writing to you with an unusual and exciting gym update, one that doesn't come very often:

We are changing our gym name!

That's right, we've been going by South Arlington Fitness & Nutrition for a little over a year now and while it has grown on us, we are changing it to something else.

A little history: since its founding, this gym has gone by the name CrossFit South Arlington. Gyms that want to offer CrossFit actually have to license the CrossFit brand from CrossFit headquarters. The gym pays a yearly licensing fee and, in return, they get to use the word CrossFit in their media content, signage and classes. In that process, a gym becomes a CrossFit affiliate.

(Note: you can use CrossFit's training methods anywhere anyway you want, but you can't call it CrossFit until you become an affiliate)

Our gym did what every CrossFit gym out there does, we picked an affiliate name and adopted it as our gym name. And all was good in the world.

Fast forward to the summer of 2020. In the midst of the pandemic, just as we were all coming out of the first COVID wave and the spring lockdowns, the founder and CEO of CrossFit HQ at the time, Greg Glassman, took to Twitter to make a political point about COVID-19 and ended up employing racially insensitive language regarding George Floyd.

Many CrossFit gyms, including us, strongly objected to this. Glassman's behavior and his words were in direct violation of our values as owners, as staff and as a community.

We are also mad at Glassman for poisoning the CrossFit brand. Affiliates were the engine that spread the word about CrossFit and its benefits. We were proud that we were championing a product that we believed could help everyone. Until Glassman's words, that is. Then we stopped being as proud.

And so we, alongside many other affiliates, dropped the CrossFit word from our name. We changed it to South Arlington Fitness & Nutrition and went about our efforts to climb back out of the hole that the pandemic had dug for all of us.

Later on, Glassman would step down as CEO of CrossFit Inc. and he would sell the company to Eric Roza, a businessman and CrossFit gym owner in Colorado. Roza has struck a different tone than Glassman, a more inclusive one, a tone that we are happy to see.

But the lesson was learned.

Our gym at 607 South Ball St is a CrossFit gym, but it is also about much more than just CrossFit. While we base our training on many of the concepts and we use the CrossFit word to describe our classes, we also have our own set of values, our own unique approach to fitness, and a community of people that care about each other way more than some headquarters office in California.

If you step into another gym, you will not see BUILDs, TILTs and SUSTAINs. You will not see 3-week waves. You will not see regular fitness testing. And you will definitely not see our very sexy dark grey and lime green combo adorning the walls.

Our brand is our own. A mix of many things yes, but ultimately unique in its own right. What happens within the walls of 607 South Ball St is for people to come discover for themselves.

And that needs its own name.

At this point, you've read this whole email and you're thinking "Mehdi, will you just get to the new name reveal already?"

Not yet. It's coming very very soon. Along with a new logo, some new apparel design and an announcement about an upcoming fitness event in September.

Make sure to check your inbox.